Peter Schmidt was at the train to meet Frederick, who was the only
passenger getting off at Meriden. The little station was empty, but near
by was the hurry-scurry of the main street of this country town of about
twenty-five thousand inhabitants.
"Now," said Schmidt, "all's well. No more New York dissipation. We'll
sound different chords here in Meriden. My wife sends her regards. She
could not come to meet you because she had to look after some patients.
If you like, we might lunch together and afterwards drive out in a sleigh
to take a look at the little house I found for you in the country. If it
suits you, you can rent it at a very low figure. In the meantime you can
take a room at our hotel here, which the whole city is proud of."
"Oh," said Frederick, "I have a wild longing for solitude. I should
prefer to spend the very first night beneath my own roof far, far from
the madding crowd of Meriden."
"Very well," responded Schmidt, "the man that owns the house is a good
friend of mine, a druggist. His name is Lamping, a pleasant Dutchman.
He'll be satisfied with any arrangements we make; and if you decide
to take the house, everything can be settled with him in fifteen
minutes."
The two men went to the hotel, where they were served with a rather
tasteless meal in surroundings comfortable and luxurious far beyond
European notions. Schmidt left Frederick alone for a while and in a few
moments sent a bell-boy to announce that the sleigh was waiting outside.
To Frederick's astonishment he found his friend sitting alone in a
pretty, two-seated sleigh reining in a fiery chestnut.
"I congratulate you on this tidy little conveyance," he said.
Peter laughed and quickly dispelled Frederick's illusion, that the
immaculate little vehicle with the horse and harnessings were his own. He
had merely hired it without a driver, a frequent practice in America.
"In fact," he joked, "I shall be quite content if we get there without
being pitched out into the snow. I confess, I have never in my life
driven a horse."
"Ah," said Frederick with chuckling satisfaction, "it is not for nothing
that my father is a general. Let me drive."
Frederick's luggage was placed in the sleigh, he jumped in, caught up the
reins, the chestnut reared, and off they dashed, with a deafening jingle
of the sleigh-bells. Their way lay along the main street, a broad,
bustling thoroughfare.
"Is this the sort of horse they usually have here?" asked Frederick. "The
beast is positively running away. If we come out of this crowded street
without broken limbs, it will be God's doing, not mine."
"Let him have his way. Every day there are one or more runaways here.
What's the difference if it's our turn to-day?"
But Frederick reined the horse in so tightly, that he actually succeeded
in pulling him up just as the Boston-New York express thundered by on a
line of railroad tracks crossing the street not safeguarded by gates or
fence. Frederick wondered how it was that a multitude of children,
workmen, gentlemen in high hats, ladies in silk dresses, horses, dogs,
trucks, and carriages were not mangled to a pulp and dashed against the
walls of the houses lining the tracks. The horse plunged and reared and
shot forward over the rails behind the last coach, sending clods of ice
and snow flying in Frederick's and Peter's faces.
"The devil!" snorted Frederick. "Now for the first time I observe that
form of madness which is specifically American. If you fall under the
wheels, you fall under the wheels. If you want to take a drive, be your
own coachman. If you break your bones, you break your bones. If you break
your neck, you break your neck."
Farther along on the same highway Frederick for the first time saw an
electric street car, then still unknown in Europe. The brilliant sparking
at the meeting of the trolley and the overhead wire was to him a new,
stimulating phenomenon. The posts holding up the wire were all shapes,
thick and slender, bowed and slanting, so that the whole made a
promiscuous impression, though the coaches were of a pleasing shape and
glided along with great rapidity.
They had passed the more frequented and dangerous section of the city
without an accident and had reached the open country. The houses grew
lower and farther apart. Before the chestnut with his jingling bells lay
an endless stretch of unblocked roadway, with excellent tracks for the
sleigh worn into the snow. The valiant American could speed to his
heart's content.
"How strange!" thought Frederick. "Here I am riding in a sleigh and
driving a horse, things I have not done since I was a boy."
Stories of sports and incidents that he had not thought of for ten years
or more occurred to him. How his father's accounts of hunting expeditions
and sleighing mishaps had set them all laughing when the family was
cosily gathered together in one room on a winter evening.
During that brisk, refreshing drive Frederick's heart was
rejuvenated. The happiest years of his boyhood were as vivid to him as
yesterday--thrilling, romantic rides by night, when the same sound of
sleigh-bells scared the silence of sleeping forests and filled the boy's
soul with pictures of midnight attacks, romantic murders, and strange
devilish phantoms. In the dazzling brilliance of the snowy fields,
breathing in the pure, bracing air, mere existence became unspeakable
bliss. Sitting there in that dainty sleigh Frederick was inclined to look
on life as a pleasure drive.
Suddenly he turned pale and had to hand the reins over to Peter Schmidt.
In the jingling of the sleigh-bells his ear caught something like the
insistent hammering ring of electric bells. It was an illusion of his
hearing, but it filled him with rising horror, and a shiver went through
his whole body. By the time Peter Schmidt, who instantly observed the
change in his friend, had brought the horse to a stop, Frederick had
already mastered his nervous attack. He did not admit it was the sinking
of the _Roland_ that had unexpectedly announced its presence again. He
merely said that the noise of the bells had irritated his nerves beyond
endurance. Fortunately, the spotless expanse of Lake Hanover was already
close by and the little house on the other shore already visible. So the
two men descended from the sleigh. Peter Schmidt, in silence, removed the
bells from the harness and hitched the horse to the branch of a bare
tree. They crossed the frozen lake on foot, making for the solitary house
under its heavy covering of snow.
Peter ascended the front door steps, which resembled great bolsters of
snow, and opened the door.
"To judge by the way it looks now, the house is scarcely habitable in
winter."
"Oh, yes it is," Frederick declared.
Having been built for summer use only, it had no cellar. On the ground
floor there was a little kitchen and two other rooms; in the attic a
bedroom as large as the two down-stairs rooms together. In the attic room
Frederick immediately decided to build his nest for an indeterminate
length of time. He scouted Peter's considerations in regard to household
service.
"I feel," he declared, "as if this house had been waiting for me, and I
for the house."